


All Out Of Faith

by melliyna



Category: Pundit RPF, Pundit RPF (US), The Tudors
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Friendship, Gen, Unrefridgerating Awesome Women
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-22
Updated: 2011-11-22
Packaged: 2017-10-26 10:20:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/281926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melliyna/pseuds/melliyna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is an AU verse in which the Tudors is transported to modern day US politics. Full credit goes to my big sis/partner in crime Em, who enabled this lots.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Out Of Faith

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bibliothekara](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bibliothekara/gifts).



Tom Cromwell wears 'scrappy little fucker' as an honour. He knows exactly where he came from - West Virginia white trash and then some. A dead father who drank to forget the mines and then a stepfather who'd hit and worse.

But he'd had a mother who refused to give up and an older brother and a little sister and they were going to get out. Even now, with those years at UVA (full ride Jefferson Scholar) and yes, Harvard (& then Oxford, for a year) he still feels uncomfortable being well fed and secure.

Tom Cromwell knows he's a bastard, politically as well as a pragmatist but frankly, he can't afford to be otherwise. Wosley, who'd built him up (plucked him up from Oxford where Wosley had been a visiting professor, in between politics) and he couldn't find himself torn down.

Not now. Not with Liz & Greg. Not knowing that with compromise he can help himself and yes, the country too.

-

Rachel often thinks Tom Cromwell is just, oddly nice. He's got a name as a hard bastard and her progressive friends don't exactly speak his name with love but he's almost gentle that first time on the show, talking strategy in place of Wosley, who'd had to leave on an urgent errand for State Senator Tudor.

Tom after hours is as much of a surprise. He wears motorbike leathers and apparently restores them. He still wears his wedding ring, even now. And apparently when drunk he is absolutely adorable.

They end up in a bar, watching CNN. Mary Boleyn is being hustled in to a car by her father, outside a hearing room.

"So your candidate was cleared hey?"

"Yes Rachel, yes he was. Of any and all misuse of public funds. And Rach, if you're asking how his wife stands it? She loves him, god help us all."

Tom laughed, bitterly. "It would make my job a lot easier if she didn't. Or rather it would make Wosleys. But no, Katherine Tudor, paragon."

"Tom," she says gently "I think it's time to stop thinking about work and drink your Manhattan before I drop your iPhone in it."

She watches it play out, after Anne Boleyn returns (Tom's friend Anne, from Oxford - younger daughter of an American diplomat largely raised in England and France) and comes back to flirting with Rachel.

This time though, she's working for Henry. And this time, she's falling for him and Rachel worries herself sick.

-

She actually slaps Henry not long before, well, before she'd almost never talked to Tom again. But Anne, slowly recovering Anne who'd been holding her daughter, tells her to go and see.

And she does. Henry is standing behind him, arms around Tom. He's saying something, something Rachel only hears the end of.

"...I built you, Tom. You are my creature and I will have my desire. See to it"

It's the black eye that gets Henry slapped. It's that perhaps, that means Rachel understands. Even after More. It's why she and Keith take Anne's phone call that night after Tom spills it all and destroys his career.

She's going to see its not, after all.


End file.
